6 ms·

The Cleartrip Hurry Algorithm

83 points by SingAlong 15y ago

moj34 15y ago
Well spotted... although it seems a little generous to call this an algorithm :-)
- pitchups 15y ago
  I am pretty sure I have seen the exact same "trick" being used on sites here in the US - including Kayak, and Orbitz etc. So I don't think Cleartip in the only travel site that does this. And probablly that is how Cleartrip got the idea from. Also, not to defend this practice in any way, but did not the OP realize that the price of the seats was changing each time he increased the number of passengers.
piyushpr 15y ago
PAWNed
bjoernbu 15y ago
Since the price is not proportional to the number of passengers, I assume there are only x seats at the displayed price. Still misleading but not es "evil" as otherwise. PS: I kinda take the word "algorithm" in teh lheadline as link bait. Without it, I would have never klicked the link.
jann 15y ago
I just tested it myself and can't confirm it. I started by searching for a flight for one person and got a few offers which said "3/4 seats left" and if you hover over the image you'll get the alt text "x seats left for that price". It actually looks like a neat feature which shows you how many seats are left in the cheapest fare group that applies to your settings. EDIT: I just did some more testing, searching for different person counts, and it does exactly what I thought. When you get "3 seats left" then you can book for 3 persons for the cheapest price, and whenever you add a 4th person, the price is higher than four times the 1-person price
Maxious 15y ago
There's this super-budget airline in Australia, Tiger Airways, so budget that they skimped on training pilots and got shutdown for some time. Anyway, their website at some point had two hidden features: if you tried to book in a group it would charge you more per person (because you're depriving them of "credit card surcharge") AND just checking the price of a certain flight a certain amount of times (showing interest in that flight) would raise the price by some increment for every other customer on the website automatically.
- plaes 15y ago
  There's at least one site I know that raises prices when you are re-visiting the specific flight (via cookie tracking).
  - mrgoldenbrown 15y ago
    Is there a reason you can't tell us which one?
zaph0d 15y ago
It basically shows the number of seats left in the same fare-basis. The problem is with the communication, and not the supposed "algorithm".
epo 15y ago
Pretty inane article and mildly paranoid conclusion. If it had said "x seats available" it would have been grammatically correct but too long for a button. And yes, "algorithm" was geek linkbait.
dspillett 15y ago
This is why I've completely and utterly screened out "limited special offer" anything these days. I will not be conned into not shopping around (which is why they do this, obviously), and I don't buy things unless I need them at the time. Occasaionaly I'll lose out when there genuinely was limited stock available and it was a good price, but overall I'm probabbly better of and certainly less rushed. All retail (web or bricks-and-mortar) and services advertising is lies pretty much at this point. A colleque gets an SMS from the local Bannatynes gym that he used to be a member of telling him about a limited time "rejoin" offer that has limited places. He has had the same message at least once a month for the last twelve months so basically both the calim of limited places and the claim that it is a limited time offer are basically lies. Or the DFDS sale "you'll never see these prices again!!!!!". The list is endless. By being dishonest in these ways, some in the retail and services industries are pushing people like me (people with enough money to not mind that they might sometimes pay a little extra in order to avoid being lied to) away. Having said that, the example given here isn't actually lying (they don't say "only X seats available") though it is misleadingly presented, either accidentally or the site is being deliberately disengneuous, and if that is deliberate than it is little better than a lie.
hrush 15y ago
Hi, My name is Hrush. I am one of Cleartrip's founders and I'd like to clarify how things actually work. Firstly, the "X seats left" feature is not an 'algorithm' at all. It is a simple count of the number of 'seats remaining' at a specific price point for a specific flight departure. In the example illustrated in the post, there is only a single seat left at a price point of Rs. 34,255. This does not mean that there is only one seat left on the flight, it means there is only one seat left at that specific price. When the search was repeated for 2 travellers, the price per person increased to 35,746, and then increased to Rs. 37,008 per person when the search was done for 4 travellers. Airline pricing is based on 'fare classes' or 'buckets'. Buckets typically work like this: 1. Each bucket is allocated a fixed number of seats. 2. Each bucket is associated with exactly one price point 3. When there are no more seats available in a bucket, seats from the next highest bucket are displayed and so on At Cleartrip, we work hard to give our customers the best prices. We never have and never will engage in the "fake scarcity tactics" that this post accuses us of. I'd also like to point out again that we have a tool tip on the button that clearly reads that there are 'X seats left at this price'.
- Udo 15y ago
  The screenshots in the article support your statement. However, don't you think this is practice grossly misleading? It's common, especially on low-cost flights, to gradually ramp up the seat price as the tickets are sold. Sometimes (and this seems to be such an example), this means no single seat costs the same as the next one sold - but that doesn't mean there are huge price differences between buying seat n and n+1. Don't you agree that the user's perception of this UI is that fake scarcity tactics are being employed?
  - hrush 15y ago
    Udo -- the practice of ramping prices up and down is called Yield Management and is a commonplace strategy for suppliers of perishable inventory such as airlines and hotels. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yield_management http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yield_management We wanted to our users to be able see how long a price point is going to remain available. Our hope is that most users will be able to make better decisions about whether to book immediately or to wait a little longer. With respect to whether the price differences are huge or not, the prices are going to be higher. Travel is an extremely price-sensitive category and India is an extremely price-sensitive market. So, in our opinion, this feature lets users make better decisions. Since the button seems to be causing some confusion, we'll see what we can do to best improve it.
SingAlong 15y ago
A lot of people are calling this title linkbait for using the word "algorithm". But I think the author is being a bit sarcastic here and hence the title of the post. P.S: I'm not the author, I only found the article interesting when I found it on twitter.
hrush 15y ago
We've posted a more detailed explanation with screenshots and examples here: http://bit.ly/yP3muv http://bit.ly/yP3muv
- dotmanish 15y ago
  Your screenshot shows the tooltip visible, which aren't by default (as already noted by a couple of commenters already). Someone on twitter mentioned that they had bought some flight tickets only because of this 'confusion' : https://twitter.com/#!/jayeshb/status/162512878287589377 https://twitter.com/#!/jayeshb/status/162512878287589377 Is that a one-off case because of confusion?
  - hrush 15y ago
    We only launched this feature last week, so it's hard to say whether it's a "one-off" case.
micheljansen 15y ago
This is arguably an application of so-called "Dark Patterns"; the black hat of UX design. The red colour, the suggestive copy are all chosen to invoke a sense of urgency. A List Apart has a good article on the subject: http://www.alistapart.com/articles/dark-patterns-deception-vs.-honesty-in-ui-design/ http://www.alistapart.com/articles/dark-patterns-deception-v...
- digikata 15y ago
  I think the theme of false urgency/scarcity is the main annoyance of the Cleartrip presentation. The rest of it is just a matter of Cleartrip displaying few seats for a narrow price, vs MakeMyTrip displaying more seats with a wider pricing range.
Uchikoma 15y ago
They won't change the interface, as it works for them. When deciding between being shady and getting more money, and being honest and getting less money, they already chose their side.
hrush 15y ago
We've redesigned the feature now and it is now live in production. Details of the design changes: http://bit.ly/y3uvv0 http://bit.ly/y3uvv0

83 points by SingAlong 15y ago

moj34 15y ago

Well spotted... although it seems a little generous to call this an algorithm :-)

pitchups 15y ago
I am pretty sure I have seen the exact same "trick" being used on sites here in the US - including Kayak, and Orbitz etc. So I don't think Cleartip in the only travel site that does this. And probablly that is how Cleartrip got the idea from. Also, not to defend this practice in any way, but did not the OP realize that the price of the seats was changing each time he increased the number of passengers.

piyushpr 15y ago

PAWNed

bjoernbu 15y ago

Since the price is not proportional to the number of passengers, I assume there are only x seats at the displayed price. Still misleading but not es "evil" as otherwise. PS: I kinda take the word "algorithm" in teh lheadline as link bait. Without it, I would have never klicked the link.

jann 15y ago

I just tested it myself and can't confirm it. I started by searching for a flight for one person and got a few offers which said "3/4 seats left" and if you hover over the image you'll get the alt text "x seats left for that price". It actually looks like a neat feature which shows you how many seats are left in the cheapest fare group that applies to your settings. EDIT: I just did some more testing, searching for different person counts, and it does exactly what I thought. When you get "3 seats left" then you can book for 3 persons for the cheapest price, and whenever you add a 4th person, the price is higher than four times the 1-person price

Maxious 15y ago

There's this super-budget airline in Australia, Tiger Airways, so budget that they skimped on training pilots and got shutdown for some time. Anyway, their website at some point had two hidden features: if you tried to book in a group it would charge you more per person (because you're depriving them of "credit card surcharge") AND just checking the price of a certain flight a certain amount of times (showing interest in that flight) would raise the price by some increment for every other customer on the website automatically.

plaes 15y ago
There's at least one site I know that raises prices when you are re-visiting the specific flight (via cookie tracking).
- mrgoldenbrown 15y ago
  Is there a reason you can't tell us which one?

zaph0d 15y ago

It basically shows the number of seats left in the same fare-basis. The problem is with the communication, and not the supposed "algorithm".

epo 15y ago

Pretty inane article and mildly paranoid conclusion. If it had said "x seats available" it would have been grammatically correct but too long for a button. And yes, "algorithm" was geek linkbait.

dspillett 15y ago

This is why I've completely and utterly screened out "limited special offer" anything these days. I will not be conned into not shopping around (which is why they do this, obviously), and I don't buy things unless I need them at the time. Occasaionaly I'll lose out when there genuinely was limited stock available and it was a good price, but overall I'm probabbly better of and certainly less rushed. All retail (web or bricks-and-mortar) and services advertising is lies pretty much at this point. A colleque gets an SMS from the local Bannatynes gym that he used to be a member of telling him about a limited time "rejoin" offer that has limited places. He has had the same message at least once a month for the last twelve months so basically both the calim of limited places and the claim that it is a limited time offer are basically lies. Or the DFDS sale "you'll never see these prices again!!!!!". The list is endless. By being dishonest in these ways, some in the retail and services industries are pushing people like me (people with enough money to not mind that they might sometimes pay a little extra in order to avoid being lied to) away. Having said that, the example given here isn't actually lying (they don't say "only X seats available") though it is misleadingly presented, either accidentally or the site is being deliberately disengneuous, and if that is deliberate than it is little better than a lie.

hrush 15y ago

Hi, My name is Hrush. I am one of Cleartrip's founders and I'd like to clarify how things actually work. Firstly, the "X seats left" feature is not an 'algorithm' at all. It is a simple count of the number of 'seats remaining' at a specific price point for a specific flight departure. In the example illustrated in the post, there is only a single seat left at a price point of Rs. 34,255. This does not mean that there is only one seat left on the flight, it means there is only one seat left at that specific price. When the search was repeated for 2 travellers, the price per person increased to 35,746, and then increased to Rs. 37,008 per person when the search was done for 4 travellers. Airline pricing is based on 'fare classes' or 'buckets'. Buckets typically work like this: 1. Each bucket is allocated a fixed number of seats. 2. Each bucket is associated with exactly one price point 3. When there are no more seats available in a bucket, seats from the next highest bucket are displayed and so on At Cleartrip, we work hard to give our customers the best prices. We never have and never will engage in the "fake scarcity tactics" that this post accuses us of. I'd also like to point out again that we have a tool tip on the button that clearly reads that there are 'X seats left at this price'.

Udo 15y ago
The screenshots in the article support your statement. However, don't you think this is practice grossly misleading? It's common, especially on low-cost flights, to gradually ramp up the seat price as the tickets are sold. Sometimes (and this seems to be such an example), this means no single seat costs the same as the next one sold - but that doesn't mean there are huge price differences between buying seat n and n+1. Don't you agree that the user's perception of this UI is that fake scarcity tactics are being employed?
- hrush 15y ago
  Udo -- the practice of ramping prices up and down is called Yield Management and is a commonplace strategy for suppliers of perishable inventory such as airlines and hotels. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yield_management http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yield_management We wanted to our users to be able see how long a price point is going to remain available. Our hope is that most users will be able to make better decisions about whether to book immediately or to wait a little longer. With respect to whether the price differences are huge or not, the prices are going to be higher. Travel is an extremely price-sensitive category and India is an extremely price-sensitive market. So, in our opinion, this feature lets users make better decisions. Since the button seems to be causing some confusion, we'll see what we can do to best improve it.

SingAlong 15y ago

A lot of people are calling this title linkbait for using the word "algorithm". But I think the author is being a bit sarcastic here and hence the title of the post. P.S: I'm not the author, I only found the article interesting when I found it on twitter.

hrush 15y ago

We've posted a more detailed explanation with screenshots and examples here: http://bit.ly/yP3muv http://bit.ly/yP3muv

dotmanish 15y ago
Your screenshot shows the tooltip visible, which aren't by default (as already noted by a couple of commenters already). Someone on twitter mentioned that they had bought some flight tickets only because of this 'confusion' : https://twitter.com/#!/jayeshb/status/162512878287589377 https://twitter.com/#!/jayeshb/status/162512878287589377 Is that a one-off case because of confusion?
- hrush 15y ago
  We only launched this feature last week, so it's hard to say whether it's a "one-off" case.

micheljansen 15y ago

This is arguably an application of so-called "Dark Patterns"; the black hat of UX design. The red colour, the suggestive copy are all chosen to invoke a sense of urgency. A List Apart has a good article on the subject: http://www.alistapart.com/articles/dark-patterns-deception-vs.-honesty-in-ui-design/ http://www.alistapart.com/articles/dark-patterns-deception-v...

digikata 15y ago
I think the theme of false urgency/scarcity is the main annoyance of the Cleartrip presentation. The rest of it is just a matter of Cleartrip displaying few seats for a narrow price, vs MakeMyTrip displaying more seats with a wider pricing range.

Uchikoma 15y ago

They won't change the interface, as it works for them. When deciding between being shady and getting more money, and being honest and getting less money, they already chose their side.

hrush 15y ago

We've redesigned the feature now and it is now live in production. Details of the design changes: http://bit.ly/y3uvv0 http://bit.ly/y3uvv0